An Uninvited Visitor

“Sadia! You’re going to be late for school!” Baba’s voice echoes impatiently throughout the house. I hurriedly gather my school ID card—mandatory for whatever reason at this particular public school—and my backpack, drop a sorry excuse of a kiss on my mother’s cheek, trip over my shoes, and hop in the front seat of the car. “I can’t wait until school is over,” I moaned.

“I can see you’re very excited to go to school, Sadia,” Baba’s sarcastic remarks in Pashto  can’t seem to please me at the moment, “la drey kaal pathey di.” There’s still three years left.

“You’re not helping.” Ignoring me, he focuses on the road up ahead, about to make a turn at the infamous Saddletowne circle.

The circle surrounds a plaza consisting of Safeway, Starbucks, and Boston Pizza. Whoever designed this probably doesn’t know how to drive. The road ahead was one that made unbelievably sharp turns, and it didn’t help that drivers didn’t drive carefully either. The stop lights change colour once in a blue moon. A few solemn, dead trees pathetically line the path, as the morning sun pours a golden glow over the entire community. Teenagers emerge from the buildings, as cockroaches do from cracks in walls. Yes, this is what I see everyday. It’s an ugly, comforting sight.

Baba makes the several turns needed just to drop me off at the front entrance, and there it is. Prison. Juvenile Hall. Educational Institution. No name makes the building sound better. “Assalamualaikum, Sadia.”

“Walaikum Assalam.” Grudgingly, I push the handle open and step out the door. I turn my head awkwardly, trying to get a sense of who’s already arrived. No one I seem to know or care about. Taking a deep breath, I trudge through the hordes of teenagers and make it through to the front entrance.

Inside, it’s a massive sea of heads stampeding, meeting up with their friends, messing around, or just taking a walk. I notice that everyone has their school ID and look down to make sure I have my own. Being paranoid may seem like an irritance, but it’s feasible. Where are they? I don’t see my small cluster of friends anywhere, until I spot a few heads with scarves on their heads and recognize them instantly. “Why hello, hello, hello!”

“Did you just come?” one of them chirps.

“Nooo, I just left”

“Well, anyway. Why don’t you come sit with us?” I explain to them that I need to fix my school login information at the library. I turn my attention towards the library, and I find myself standing in front of the sleek double doors. I notice that there aren’t any students packed around the library area, which is surprising considering we have nothing else to do other than mope around with peers.

The walls are transparent glass, in which you can see the entire library—books, computers, desks—and there are inspirational quotes lined up top, touching the ceiling, all said by a group of famous people as diverse as a pack of Smarties. There are lounge areas and chairs scattered sporadically across the floor, usually accompanied by mobs of students, but there are none to be found. Instead, all my mole-like eyes can absorb are the heads of people I don’t know, nor do I care about. Oh, there are students in there! Maybe I can just go to the librarian and figure my login stuff out. I establish a plan in my head for this mission:

1. Look straight ahead
2. Check sparingly to see if the ID is still there
3. Go to the librarian and fix your login information
4. Get out of there

I hold my breath, open the door, and trot inside. I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight.

All the staff and teachers are in a conference and I just busted in. All the members of admin are wearing blue, thin school spirit T-shirts an black bottoms. Today must’ve been game day. They all turn their heads to each other, then to me, and no one utters a single word. It feels as though time has stopped, and I feel as though I intruded on some secret intel, some information that was too classified for students to know about. I make some awkward eye contact with the librarian, who hates my guts, and do a U-turn back to my retreat. Abort mission! Abort! Abort! By the time I find my friends, they are already head over heels in laughter. Their thin, black scarves flutter back and forth in an ugly fashion, but they don’t care. The whole scene had unfold before them. I forgot that the walls were clear.

 

Final thoughts:

When told that we we to write an anecdote, I froze. I didn’t think my life was interesting enough to write a whole post of just one moment. Then, I realized that I embarrass myself a lot. As in, I’m able to avoid embarassment, but it happens anyway. The above incident is what I consider my most embarrassing high school moment. In some scenes, it may seem that I’m exaggerating, but trust me. I’m not. This happened back in September, before I attended FFCA. I was attending my designated public high school. At times, I think back to how the situation really played out, and yes, it was exactly how I worded it.

 

Reference Images:

• https://thesaurus.plus/synonyms/uninvited_guest
• https://giphy.com/gifs/sloth-kA158Gup0eSpG